224 Quotes by T.S. Eliot

About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong.

The detective story, as created by Poe, is something as specialised and as intellectual as a chess problem, whereas the best English detective fiction has relied less on the beauty of the mathematical problem and much more on the intangible human element. [...] In The Moonstone the mystery is finally solved, not altogether by human ingenuity, but largely by accident. Since Collins, the best heroes of English detective fiction have been, like Sergeant Cuff, fallible.

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or longBut at my back in a cold blast I hearThe rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.

I suspect, in fact, that a good deal of the value of an interpretation is -- that it should be my own interpretation.

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.

Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,Admire the momentsDiscuss the late events,Correct our watches by the public clocks.Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

What have we given?My friend, blood shaking my heartThe awful daring of a moment's surrenderWhich an age of prudence can never retractBy this, and this only, we have existed.

Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.